Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. recently announced the U.S. Supreme Court will hear its appeal of a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to Bionews Texas. That decision invalidated the claim of U.S. Patent 5,800,808, which Teva holds and which claims the process for manufacturing the active ingredient of Teva's relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis medication, copaxone 20mg/mL. Teva says it is committing to exploring all of its options to protect its intellectual property for copaxone. The drug is expensive, and reduces the frequency of relapse in patients who have relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, which includes those who have experienced a clinical episode and have MRI results consistent with a diagnosis of MS.

"2014 will be a pivotal year for Teva and a year of major transitions across the company," Eyal Desheh, acting president and CEO of Teva said in a statement. "We will continue to make significant progress in implementing our strategy. We will focus our efforts on our generics business and core R&D programs, including high-value complex generics, promising specialty medicines and new therapeutic entities."

Part of Teva's 2014 strategy includes blocking generic versions of copaxone. Teva has posed two scenarios - in one, copaxone will become a generic, and the company assumes at least two generic competitors to the drug will emerge in the U.S. The exclusive copaxone scenario assumes no generics will come onto the market. In either scenario, Teva plans to launch a 40mg three-times-weekly dose of copaxone.